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Meanings

CC-CEDICT

  1. 1.to fall forward
  2. 2.to fall prostrate
  1. 1.servant

CC-CEDICT · CC BY-SA

Wiktionary

  1. 1.servant; slave (often male)
  2. 2.I; me; your humble servant
  3. 3.coachman; groom
  4. 4.to attach; to adhere
  5. 5.a surname
  6. 6.to fall forward; trip
  7. 7.to lie prostrate; prone

Wiktionary · CC BY-SA

Etymology

In the oracle bone script and the early Western Zhou bronze script, it was a pictogram (象形) of a slave or prisoner, with hands holding a basket (其) to pick up garbage, an instrument of punishment (辛) above the head, and a tail (尾) to represent the slave's low status, akin to animals. 其 later corrupts into 甾, the hands (廾) move below 辛, and the slave's body (人) moves to become the left component. Later, 辛 corrupts into 丵 (probably by fusing with 甾) and combines with 廾 to give 菐 (OC *boːɡ, *puɡ), which functions as a phonetic component. In the current form, it is essentially a phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *boːɡ, *buːɡ): semantic 人 (“man”) + phonetic 菐 (OC *boːɡ, *puɡ). Probably related to Tibetan བུ (bu, “son; boy”) (Coblin, 1986). Alternatively, Peiros and Starostin (1996) compare it to Tibetan ཕྲུག (phrug, “child”).

Wiktionary · CC BY-SA

Stroke order

Components

Components from cjk-decomp · MIT

More examples & usage (AI)

Derived terms

Wiktionary · CC BY-SA

Related words